A Field Guide to Deception (15 page)

“Let me out. Stop the car and let me out.”

“I'd like to throw you from the car.”

“Let me out.”

Claire pulled over and Liv jumped out, slamming the door behind her. Staring forward, murderous, Claire stamped the accelerator. Later, it felt like the car drove itself to Bailey's.

Bailey came to the door in pajama bottoms and a pale yellow tank top, her hair in a ponytail. She stepped back to let Claire through, reached her hand to her hair, and closed the door behind them. After Claire carried the sleeping child to the couch, she crossed to Bailey and pressed her from the living room, down the hall, and into the bedroom, their bodies not quite touching, Bailey's expression worried. A strain between them as Claire closed Bailey's bedroom door, grabbed hold, and kissed her. Their clothes left on, stretched awkwardly, neither spoke, until Bailey panted Claire's name.

On the windowsill, scented candles and incense cones. Chef pants tossed onto a chair in the corner, back issues of food and wine magazines piled on one end table, and ten pounds of hardcover cookbooks piled on the other. The walls painted a cool shade of green like daquiri ice.

“What happened?” Bailey asked, on her side, with her head propped in her hand. “Did she screw somebody?”

“We're all so smart.”

“So I'm revenge, is that right? I'm the dagger in the back. Et tu, bitch.”

“I hate girls.”

“Wait, I know this song.”

“I was only sad before.”

“You're pretty sad now. It's just sex, Claire. Nobody took vows or holy orders or anything. Do you care so much? You've seen the girls. They aren't a threat in any real way.”

“Are you encouraging me?”

“I don't really have a fitting speech for this situation. I haven't even shaved my legs.”

Claire laughed. Bailey's hair had pulled from her ponytail, and fell now around her face. Without makeup, she looked younger, her eyes lighter. Rocked up on her elbow, Claire kissed her gently. Claire meant to say something about this being unfair and how she was sorry, but knew she wasn't sorry, and so didn't say anything. She had wanted, and she had taken what she wanted. Just like always.

Bailey stood up and fixed her hair. “Come on, I've been baking scones. Blueberry lemon, you'll love them.”

Liv pulled the old cabinets from the walls, above the counter and below, so that the kitchen looked like a shell, just the idea of a kitchen. In the end, the counter would be replaced as well, but the cabinets were first. Two days before, Claire had emptied the cupboards, stored the contents in the pantry, in boxes on the kitchen table, above the refrigerator. Liv had hitched a ride back to Claire's. Almost the moment she slammed the car door, she'd turned for home, ashamed of herself.

Heavy, ugly, and awkward, the old cabinets came down in pieces. She'd piled them in the wheelbarrow and hauled loads to her truck. She'd finish before they came back, and could start installing the new cabinets in the morning. The drill's battery had died, and the backup had lost its charge, so she re-charged one while she unscrewed the panels by hand. Glad of the struggle, glad of the weight of the wood, glad to be alone and sorry, the ache almost a pleasure.

“Does Simon like scones?” Bailey asked, smearing butter on the
opened halves.

“Probably. I'm not sure he's ever had them.”

Astonished, Bailey stared at Claire a moment before shaking her head. “Poor neglected kid.”

“Want me to make coffee?”

“Help yourself. I think you know where everything is.”

Claire pulled the grinder down and proceeded to overwhelm the buttery lemon scent with brewed coffee. They sat on stools in the kitchen, Claire's mouth alive with tastes and possibilities. The scones made her hopeful, a kid in a garden where the flowers bloom all at once. “Bailey. You have a gift.”

“Don't gush. You can have another if you want.”

“Are these your own recipes?”

“Sometimes. I experiment. Nothing ever really tastes the same from batch to batch.”

“You should have your own bakery. You must.”

“Yeah, I know. It'll happen just by wishing. That's how financing works, right? Oh, Simon, you're awake.”

He came into the room with his face creased from the pillow on the couch and his hair random. He climbed into his mother's lap and nestled against her. “Butter,” he said.

They gave him half a scone and a scoop of butter. Bailey poured a glass of milk and set it beside him. He woke slowly, dipping his finger into the butter, becoming more alert bite by bite.

“Do you camp?” Claire asked.

“I love camping.”

“I was thinking of going this weekend. What's your schedule?”

“I'm off work by noon on Friday. My weekend is clear.”

“What do you think, we could go to Missoula, camp up at Lolo?”

“And Liv?”

“I'm asking you.”

Bailey looked at Simon, then back at Claire. “Let's be clear here. I like you, Claire. I do. Enough, in all probability, to make trouble for all of us, but I'm not courting trouble. This afternoon won't happen again. Liv and I aren't what we were, but I'm not out to punish her. I
don't want any part of that, well, just this tiny part, but not to make a habit of it.”

“It isn't like that—“

“Uh huh. I'm just saying. Ask Liv if she wants to go camping. We can make a weekend of it, the four of us.”

All evening, Claire stalled. At Bailey's, at the market after Bailey's, on the drive home, she asked Simon multiple times if he wanted to go to the park. Each time he refused, asked to watch a movie, eat popcorn, play with his trains. A dark and empty house, she dreaded it. Dreaded her mood and Liv's.

Her aunt had never sustained a romantic relationship while Claire lived in the house.There had been men, electrons of them, circling around, but Denise had never let any of them settle. She'd found relationships exhausting, felt they compromised her focus, hindered her work.

Claire felt this too, and on some level, believed it. So she was unprepared for the house, lit and noisy, or for the kitchen, half-dressed with aspirations, or the girl, sweating and determined. She stood in the doorway; Simon sprinted past to his trains and returned with Donald and Douglas. Liv, on her knees, continued assembling the new cabinets, drilling hardware, hanging doors. The pieces were striking and elegant, stained lightly to accentuate the cherry wood.

As she put the groceries in the refrigerator, or the appropriate storage box, Claire went back over the day in case she had missed something. She had not expected this. She had not expected the fight or Bailey or the kitchen. In the end, she put a movie on for Simon and ran a bath for herself.

In the night, she ventured back, and turned on the kitchen light. The west side of the kitchen sat unfinished like glaring eye sockets, but the east side was complete except for the new counters. Claire touched the smooth, gorgeous grain, her hands drawn across the wood as though it were a fabric. They might have been bodies, skin, as she glided her hands across their surfaces. It felt erotic—topless, in her
bare feet—to stroke Liv's handiwork. Self-conscious, she switched the light off, stood in the dark before the cabinets like a temple virgin: hesitant, restive, thrilled.

Denise would have liked Liv, Claire was certain. Would have considered her unpredictability proof of her intelligence, her worth. The boring, reliable ones were bred for simple girls, satisfied with less. If a relationship was effortless, you weren't doing it right.

Claire walked downstairs, convinced less each step that she knew what Denise thought. Denise might have considered Liv shifty, irresponsible. After all, Denise had stayed—all her life she had stayed in Spokane—by the river, with her samples and her work and little else until Claire had descended. Even Simon she had fought, warred against the simple idea of him. Change a worrying variable for Denise, one outside the control of the scientific researcher and, therefore, dangerous.

In the basement, moonlight, and the past on tiptoes. Claire, unafraid, heretical, opened the closet door in her aunt's study, pulled down boxes, and began to go through Denise's papers. Alternate chapters of previous field guides, transcripts from lectures given at universities and conferences, field notes dating back to the 1970s. Piles at her feet as she worked methodically through the closet, before turning to the desk drawers and filing cabinets.

The paper trail of a life, Claire tore through every item, and felt remorseless for the first time. Stripped away like the cabinets in the kitchen, just papers, memorabilia and nothing more. Not a soul, not even a body, just documents.

Claire wanted some place to rest, some haven for this furious love. She wanted to feel less, and with more control.

She ran upstairs and outside. Her path through the grass slick with dew, it might have been 3 a.m., and Claire stumbled in the long wheatgrass, grasping at roots to pull herself back up. Down again several steps later, and she couldn't make herself get up. She didn't want this anymore. Not another step on this path, volatile and destructive. She didn't want anymore.

“I don't want you,” she said. “I don't want you.”

Claire stood, shivering, ten yards from the camper. “I don't want you. I don't want you.” Shivering, unable to go on, or turn back.

Nineteen

Finish work

Liv finished the cabinets the day after they left, Claire and Simon, to camp in Montana. Claire had never asked, only packed their things and said she'd be gone. Less complicated, Liv thought, than their staying. She'd begin on the bathrooms while they were gone, the shut-off water inconveniencing no one.

She tore out the bathtub, found the subfloor remarkably sound, and when Bailey came by on Saturday, recruited her to help drag the behemoth outdoors to be left in the grass until the truck could be emptied of old cabinets. Bailey stayed the afternoon, chattering from a chair she'd pulled into the doorway, while Liv worked to disconnect the plumbing, and pull the sink and toilet. Grateful now for the distraction of another human, Liv offered to buy dinner and drinks.